Here is my issue. I have win98 on my harddrive on an older pc. Explorer has become corrupt so I can no longer get into win98. I'm trying to boot something off of a cd, but my cdrom doesn't seem to load in DOS. Though the drivers should be stored somewhere in C:/Windows. Is there anyway to load the drivers from the hdd, once dos is loaded. Also: It is a compaq that had the bios on the hdd, and has since been repartitioned so booting directly from cd is not an option.

Hi Tony, Simplest way id to boot on w98 startup floppy. It has drivers for most CDROMs. If that does not work, because Compaq has some off-the-wall driver, you may need to copy the driver from the HD. And modify the config.sys to suit. Let us know. M2

In most cases a "standard" Winedows98 startup disk will do what you want. What system are you running to post this?

What are the actual specs of the machine in question? The ones you've posted are pretty meaningless. Yes, you should be able to boot with the DOS drivers loaded from the appropriate floppy. Normally you can't load the CD driver outside of config.sys - although I have read of command line utilities that would allow it. Ultimately what? You're hoping to repair or reinstall Win98? Might be better off posting in the windows forum - there are likely Windows solutions (scanreg, sfc, for instance) We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

What I want to be able to do is boot a live os cd, problem is, I don't have access to a floppy drive to burn the boot disk. What I'd like to do is burn the boot.img to cd with my laptop, throw it in my non-working win98 machine, use dos to rawwrite the boot.img from cd to floppy, then restart the pc with the boot floppy, and the actually burned cd with the os. Problem is that my cdrom isn't recogonized in DOS for some reason. The win98 bootdisk files are all stored onthe hard drive in c:\windows\command\ebd. I think I just have to modify config.sys, to load the drivers from that folder?

""" the hdd, and has since been repartitioned so booting directly from cd is not an option.""" If I understand you correctly, you cannot boot your compaq from a cold start to a cd and you have tried this with a know good cd? Seems to me you are going around in circles. Have you in fact tried a standard windows98 bootdisk? (You can't make one?) """What I want to be able to do is boot a live os cd""" Are you stating this wrong, that is you want to ACCESS a cdrom, but you cannot BOOT from a cold start? ""What I'd like to do is burn the boot.img to cd with my laptop, throw it in my non-working win98 machine, use dos to rawwrite the boot.img from cd to floppy, then restart the pc with the boot floppy"" If you could do this, you would not need to, get it? If you could boot the cd in the first place, you would not even NEED the floppy at all. """The win98 bootdisk files are all stored onthe hard drive in c:\windows\command\ebd. I think I just have to modify config.sys, to load the drivers from that folder?""" WE are getting confused, again. If you can boot to the hard drive "at all" in the damaged machine, can you get to a C:\ prompt by using "F8"? If that is the case, you should be able to make a bootable floppy by doing this: Boot the damaged machine to the hard drive, "normally" F8, but hey, it's a comcrap Once you get to a C: prompt, type Forma A: /s and enter. If for some reason this does not work, change directory to C:\Windows\Command, and run it from there. When you have the A: disk formatted, and the system files on there, NOW navigate to C:\Windows\Command\Ebd, and from there type copy *.* a: (ENTER) When you are done, you should essentially have a Windows98 startup disk that will load your CDROM drivers.